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The eight limbs of yoga : a handbook for living yoga philosophy PDF

82 Pages·2015·0.52 MB·English
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Begin Reading Table of Contents About the Authors Copyright Page Thank you for buying this Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook. To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters. Or visit us online at us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup For email updates on Stuart Ray Sarbacker, click here. For email updates on Kevin Kimple, click here. The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy. To all aspiring yogins and yoginīs By the strength gained through this practice, we can come to know the method of bringing the mind and sense organs under control. Thus can we achieve yoga. For it is only through the control of the mind and sense organs that we come to know our true nature, and not through intellectual knowledge, or by putting on the garb of a yogi. —Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, Yoga Mala Foreword This concise book provides a user’s guide to the practice of yoga. Nearly twenty million people regularly practice some form of yoga in the United States. A typical yoga class will include some stretching, some yoga postures, focused breathing, and, generally at the end of the class, a period of deep relaxation. Yoga returns people to their bodies and breath, allowing for a contemplative space to arise. In some yoga classes, students may be encouraged to pause and cultivate a moment of mindfulness, and perhaps carry that from the yoga class into the world. The beginning point of being mindful, as this book gently shows, entails being aware of the basic need for inner and outer safety. Yoga advocates the principle of do no harm. By restraining oneself from aggression or violence in thought, word, and deed, one develops an atmosphere of peace that can put others at ease. This principle then governs the other ethical teachings of yoga: to be truthful, honest, respectful in matters of sexuality, and nonhoarding. With this ongoing discipline, a person can then seek the positive yoga components of purity, happiness, steadfastness, contemplative study, and dedication to higher ideals. The mind states of yoga result in the ability to gather oneself inward, to cultivate focus. This focus can lead to meditation, the capacity to sustain attention on a goal higher than and beyond self-concern. Building on the traditional philosophy known as Sāṃkhya, yoga provides techniques by which one can rise above mistaken notions governed by ignorance, egoism, attraction, repulsion, and the drive toward self-perpetuation. By understanding the workings of the realm of karma, and by reshaping the body and mind through mastery of breath, one can distinguish between the realm of change and the changeless witness. This witness consciousness, a place of freedom, can become, through yoga, the ground for integrative being in the world. Samādhi, the goal of yoga, allows one to dissolve the boundaries between self and world. This experience takes many forms and can involve many different techniques. Yoga leaves open many options and can be practiced by atheists as well as by devotees of one of the many embodiments of the divine. By focusing on how the mind functions, yoga shows what is possible, without demanding allegiance to any one particular set of beliefs. Buddhists, Hindus, Jainas, Sikhs, and Muslims have used yogic techniques for centuries, techniques that are now being widely applied in the modern world by Christians, Jews, and secularists. This book, remarkable for its brevity, provides a road map for the exploration of yoga. Stuart Ray Sarbacker and Kevin Kimple have masterfully covered the basics of yoga philosophy without compromising its complexity and profundity. Read in conjunction with one of the many good translations of Patañjali’s Yogasūtra, this book can help the student of yoga understand the transformative potential of yoga practice. Christopher Key Chapple Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology Director, Master of Arts in Yoga Studies Loyola Marymount University

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Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.